CFP: Feminism and War (4/15/06; 10/20/06-10/22/06)

A Conference on "Feminism and War"October 20-22, 2006, at Syracuse University

Call for Proposals

The Women's Studies Program at Syracuse University invites proposals for papers to be presented at a national conference on the contested and complex relationship between feminism and war. The focus will be on recent U.S. government initiatives that claim war in the name of women's liberation, but with a global and transnational context in which other military actions might be considered. We look forward to energetic dialogue from interdisciplinary perspectives on these sub-themes:

Women's Liberation and U.S. Foreign Policy: U.S. War and Women in Iraq and Afghanistan War and Women in and of the U.S The War and Organizing for Women's Liberation

Confirmed Speakers:

Zillah Eisenstein, author most recently of Against Empire; Feminisms, Race and the West (Palgrave MacMillan, 2004).

Suheir Hammad, a Palestinian-American poet who has performed on Broadway and whose books include Born Palestinian, Born Black.

Shanaz Khan, author of Muslim Women: Crafting a North American Identity (University Press of Florida, 2000).

Jasbir Kaur Puar, author of Geographies of Globalization (Duke, 2001) and most recently"Abu Ghraib: Arguing Against Exceptionalism," in Feminist Studies, and with Amit Rai, "Monster, Terrorist, Fag: The War on Terrorism and the Production of Docile Patriots," in Social Text 72.

A special invitation is extended to activists to submit proposals, to increase dialogue between theoretical analysis and grounded experience.

We hope to examine questions such as: What are the multiple interpretations of the phrase "women's liberation"? How are these multiple interpretations related to the specifics of religion, culture, history, nation within the current U.S. wars? What, in fact, is assumed about the category "woman" in the context of these conceptual and actual locations at this moment in time? What different philosophical concepts of "freedom for women" might be implicit in the current debate raised by the conduct of U.S. wars? What different histories-national, gendered, religious-intersect within this debate about women and freedom? What are the liberating and limiting aspects of religion in relation to women in these debates? How does the struggle over definitions of women's freedom manifest itself in cultural creations, artifacts, and productions? Have women in Iraq and Afghanistan been liberated by the recent Gulf War?

The Conference Organizing Committee includes Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Linda Martín Alcoff, Gwen Pough, and Vivian May. We will consider proposals for single papers or panels. Please send a one page abstract for each paper, or send a one page description of each panel proposal with one page abstracts for each paper in the panel to the committee at the address below.